


don't feel so badly about it

by imprintofadream (imprint_of_a_doe)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imprint_of_a_doe/pseuds/imprintofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>arthur isn’t so slow on the uptake and eames is a little quick to find his feet and his clothes and his heart whenever he leaves, gathering them to him as arthur stares up at the ceiling rather than at eames’ back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't feel so badly about it

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings:** non-chronological storytelling. run-ons that fairly sprint. uh, possible violence. stupidity.  
>  **notes** : uh, oops, I guess this isn’t fluff after all. even though it should have been from the basic outline—it _deviated_ , as the damn things are wont to do. also, uh, arthur and eames weren’t meant to be so _challenged_. *blink* thanks, as always, to betsy for the beta.  
>  **for:** [noor](http://phoenixnoor.livejournal.com), because I’ve been promising her this since before christmas and this is her belated holiday ‘I love you’ from me. I’m sorry neither Eames nor Arthur would let me go easy on them.

_**don’t feel so badly about it** _

_-the beginning-_

It starts innocently enough. Arthur doesn’t even keep the first note. He can’t, really, because even if he were thinking about it, it’s conspicuous to remove a table from the hotel room. It takes him a while to notice; mornings aren’t the easiest of times for Arthur pre-coffee or cigarette or run.

So he goes out and grabs a mocha at Starbucks before finding his way to the study room in the university they’re using as their base. Sara is waiting for him there, new briefs in hand, a list of questions written up in the other, and he sits down in his chair at the table and lets her drag him through all of her worries and theories. Eames arrives two hours later, meandering in with an obnoxious yawn. He waves at them and settles himself across the table from Arthur.

Arthur is _not_ distracted when Eames’ ankles brush against his, just once, and he does not smear ink across one of Sara’s carefully printed drafts—though it is a very close call. She doesn’t notice, too absorbed in one set of ideas right now to notice anything beyond, and Arthur is thankful. He kicks Eames viciously as soon as Sara starts to move around the table to address him.

Eames only laughs and drops a wink at him before dropping an outrageous compliment in Sara’s direction.

“Why were you so late, Eames?” She’s snappy—she beats Arthur to the punch, even, and he resents her a little for that.

He stretches in his chair and Arthur can see the edge of a bruise at his collar; he feels his skin flush and looks down at his papers. He won’t acknowledge that it’s probably a bite mark, won’t let his mind drift to who put it there. “I was just getting some things in order, picking up supplies—food, condoms, you know,” Eames answers, and Arthur doesn’t have to lift his head to know he’s grinning. The accent he’s affected for Sara’s benefit is German, perfectly so, though if he was hoping it would make her go easier on him, it fails.

“Eames, please, focus. If I’d known you were so casual about a job as important as this, I’m thinking I may have been hesitant to hire you,” Sara snaps. Arthur knows she was already hesitant—nervous disposition, Sara—and everyone here knows this would be impossible without Eames’ particular talent. It’s research, after all. “You’re lucky Arthur pointed out your usefulness, though I’m beginning to think his vouching isn’t worth much with the display you’re putting on.”

Arthur shakes his head minutely and highlights a passage in one of the reports. It’s going to be a very long day.

  
_-subsequent-_   


“So it’s your fault I’m involved in this, is it?”

“Don’t read into that, Christ, all you do is read into shit unnecessarily.”

“I’m a forger, Arthur; if I can’t read into things I’d be bloody terrible at it, wouldn’t I? ‘Course, you wouldn’t know what it takes to be a forger. Specific skill set and all.”

Eames pulls himself up onto the small kitchen surface and Arthur blindly hands him a block of cheese and a grater over his shoulder. “Make yourself useful, please. Forger still sounds like a stupid job description. And you read into things too _much.”_

“I notice just enough, actually. I can’t exactly turn it off either.”

“Keep your observations to yourself or deal with my pointing out their erroneous nature, then,” Arthur says, pushing the eggs around in the pan. “So far as they concern me.”

“Hmm. You don’t happen to have any bleach then, do you?”

Arthur turns from the stovetop to glare at Eames, suspicion filling his mind with countless scenarios he dearly wishes are not reality. “Why?”

Eames grins at him and continues grating the cheese. “You know I didn’t wash my hands before you handed this to me?” he says instead, and Arthur wants to punch him. He doesn’t.

Arthur finishes making dinner—why he’s cooking for Eames as well, he couldn’t tell you honestly—in silence; Eames hums off-key Broadway tunes. It’s a miracle the knives stay in their drawer, really, and Arthur silently congratulates himself for this demonstration of his self-restraint as he hands a plate back and makes his way over to the kitchen table. He moves the paper from where he dropped it this morning and sets his plate down before he notices it.

He stops.

Stares.

“Eames?”

“Well, yes, that’s why I was asking about the bleach. Or are you going to say this observation is erroneous as well?”

He can hear the laughter in Eames’ voice and he can feel the flush rising on his face again. He wishes he could undo his tie and unbutton the first few buttons of his shirt without raising suspicion. “Why?” he asks, almost helpless.

“Well, darling, it was a true observation from my point of view.”

Arthur continues to stare at the words written on the table. In all-caps, spelled out in black marker, large letters proclaim:

  


Arthur can’t look away. He closes his eyes instead.

And now he’s flashing through the previous night, flashing through Eames’ skin against his and Eames’ voice in his ear and his teeth against Eames’ collarbone and fingers pressed against bone and flesh and muscle and there are bruises on his wrists under the cuffs of his shirt and bruises on his thighs from Eames’ hands and—

He shakes his head and looks at Eames, who appears to be torn between laughter and a very tentative form of embarrassment. “Don’t ask me—my brain was addled by that golden post-coitus afterglow,” he says, sitting on the other side of the table and looking at the words almost fondly. “I suppose apologizing is worth very little?”

“Eames.” Arthur takes a deep breath and slowly sits down, still shaking his head minutely. “Song lyrics?”

“Apt enough, don’t you agree?”

Eames shrugs and grins at him and Arthur—Arthur rolls his eyes almost fondly and doesn’t move his knee when it rests against Eames’ under the table. It’s a small table, after all.

  


_-forwards-_   


Arthur stares up at the ceiling, watching the Parisian sunset spatter reds and pinks and golds over the plaster; he can hear Eames moving about in the next room, hear thumps and quiet curses and then Eames is in the doorway to his bedroom, leaning against the door frame. He appears comfortable, but Arthur knows better.

“That was Simmons. I’ve got a job to prepare for,” Eames says. Arthur remains silent and does not turn his head to acknowledge this. His breathing is easy, unperturbed. “Drop me off at the airport?”

There is come drying on Arthur’s stomach, sticky and thick and not his; sweat has cooled on his skin, evaporated. He smells like Eames rather than himself, smells like them both, and lately he’s beginning to hate it. He wants a shower only he can’t move because if he does he’s just—

“Hey, I can take a cab, nothing big. I am stealing coffee though.” Eames keeps talking, because Arthur is not being nearly as secretive about this as he should be. Which is ironic, because Arthur is one of the best secret-keepers when he has to be, one of the best liars—Eames is _the_ best, but Arthur is decent, and he does not even put up a pretense right now. He breathes and lies in his bed and stares up at the ceiling with Eames’ bruises pressed into his body and a heart that twists in on itself, knowledge slowly eating away at him like vicious acid. 

“Fine,” he says, blinking once when his contacts finally become too dry to see. “I’ll call the cab company for you.”

Eames hovers a moment and then turns, slowly, and walks away. Arthur is glad he cannot see his face. He knows what he will find on the kitchen cupboards when he goes for food later tonight, and he does not relish it.

Still, he is helpless.

  
_-backwards-_   


“Hey,” Ariadne says, sprawling over the corner of his desk. She sets a model down on top of his paperwork, ignoring the fact that his hands are on top of said paperwork, and points at a block with a pen. “Left, right, or center?”

“Under,” he says, mostly because he wants her to go away and mostly because it’s not really work that’s on top of his paperwork pile right now. He has no idea what this one says and does not wish her to find out should it be incriminating.

Ari rolls her eyes and nudges his shoulder with her calf, purses her lips a little. “Arthur, come on, stop being an asshole and just help me. That’s your job, isn’t it?”

“No.”

Eleanor laughs from across the empty church and he looks up to see her covering her mouth belatedly with her hands. She shrugs at him, eyes still crinkled with a smile, and he pulls one hand out from under Ariadne’s model to rub his face. “Mirror it,” he tells her, pointing at a different section. “In the designs we worked on, we were planning to mirror it, remember? Stupid fucking fun-house shit.”

“You chose this job,” she reminds him cheerfully. “And it’ll be fun to play a little. In a funhouse the projections won’t be nearly as annoyed if I make last minute changes and fuck everything up. It’ll just be part of the experience.”

“Right,” Arthur says flatly, because he used to be afraid of clowns once, believe it or not, and because he is confused by things far more complicated than this maze.

Ariadne narrows her eyes at him and lifts her model without another word, eyes immediately searching for the note. She reads it upside down and he lets her because, really, she can probably guess. Her face scrunches up and she sighs. “Okay, I’ll mirror it and you can check it when I’m done.” She slides off his desk and turns and he is free.

Only: “Arthur, you know he doesn’t mean it.”

“He always does, Ariadne,” he says, running fingers over the neatly painted letters on the top-most paper of his work.

  


He moves it under everything then, and tries to forget, because, really, what else can he do?

  
_-subsequent-_   


He’s not very good at forgetting.

  
_-backwards-_   


It’s LA and subsequently it is far too warm. Arthur has shed his jacket and his waistcoat, unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt, folded back his sleeves and pressed damp paper towels to the back of his neck where his sweat is surely staining the silk of his collar. Mal grins at him from her place on the floor, stomach swollen and belly button out. He can’t stop thinking that if anyone pressed their thumb there she would go straight into labor—the thought terrifies him.

“Sit,” she says.

He does, because he is young and he is uncomfortable and _why_ did he not dress appropriately. He’s still not sure what’s so important about impressing this woman, someone barely older than himself, anyway, but he has always been taught to respect others and she apparently has a job opportunity for him and perhaps sitting on the floor will get him further in the process.

“It’s research,” she says. “I don’t think the compound will do anything to the baby but we’re not sure. Still, it’s hard to stop me. You’ll see what I mean. The military doesn’t do it right. You can’t dream the way we do in the military.”

She grins at him, and he can see now that she is dangerous in her own way, sharp beauty and sultry gaze and—he would tell her his secrets, he admits, and maybe he will. He should leave.

“You’re going down with me so you can observe the techniques I’m using and so you can monitor me down there and make sure I don’t get myself killed. The adrenaline unsettles the baby when I’m kicked out like that. You’ll also be writing down all of you observations later, so take note of things that catch your attention, even things that shouldn’t and so do.”

Arthur goes down in the dreamscape with this woman, Mallorie Cobb, in her office in some research lab, and he falls in love with her style, her cool demeanor, and when they come up he asks—shy, unsure, new to everything about this—if she’ll be wanting his help again.

She smiles, secretive and sincere at once, and shrugs. “Perhaps. You’ll meet a lot of people if you stick around, Mr. Levine.”

And he does meet a lot of people. He meets Dom, her husband, and he meets Emily, their friend who helped to create the Somnacin compound in the first place, and he re-meets Colonel Robertson who implemented it in the military training exercises where Arthur first experienced it. He networks, because Mal encourages him to do so. She seems amused by everything around her but she is darker in her dreams, less airy, and he loves that about her, that her life is separated into _work_ and _play_ and _family_ and that the boxes don’t often coincide.

But she introduces him to an old friend of hers, and he mixes everything into a giant pot and ladles it out at random, and Arthur grits his teeth because he has a _system_ now, him and Mal and whoever else joins them. Eames, however, does not work with a system. He tosses ideas out like bread crumbs at a park, delighting in watching the rest of his team scramble amongst themselves over those ideas. Arthur sits at the edges of the brainstorming sessions with his arms folded, one foot rocking him back and forth on the back legs of his chair because it’s a habit he’s never broken, and Eames grins at him, infuriatingly cheerful, brilliant in a messy way that breaks Arthur down bit by bit.

So Arthur makes a choice, and he drags Eames into an empty classroom at the university where the academics are hosting a big debate, and he presses Eames against a wall, crowds into him so that he can feel hipbones pressing into his own, and says, “I’m tired of you looking at me like that. Do something other than stare and annoy me.”

And then he lets go, straightens his vest, and heads into the lecture hall to get a cup of coffee and meet with Sara, the architect Mal has lent him out to for this go ‘round.

  
_-subsequent-_   


Arthur answers the door to his hotel suite with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, the phone up to his ear. “Yeah, exactly, so if projections are something to worry about—” He blinks at Eames, standing in the doorway, shoulders slouched and eyebrows expectant, and then looks back over his shoulder as if he’s hoping to see someone else there.

“Arthur?” Sara asks, and she sounds annoyed. He’d run off earlier with Mal and Dom after the lecture series was over rather than sticking around to discuss their project—job—with her.

“I’ll call you back later, okay? Something came up,” he says, and he flips the phone closed and stands aside to silently let Eames in. “What are you doing here? We don’t need you until tomorrow.”

Eames peers around and then swings to stare at Arthur with slightly-narrowed eyes. “What’re you playing at, Arthur?”

Arthur nearly drops his toothbrush; rather, he starts choking on his own saliva and has to lean over the kitchen sink to cough it up. “What do you mean, what’m I playing at?” he croaks when his airway is clear, glaring and swiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “You’re the one who showed up here.”

“You’re the one who shoved me against a wall today and invaded my personal space,” Eames retorts, and Arthur feels himself flush, just lightly, as he recalls it.

“And?”

“And I don’t appreciate it.”

“I don’t appreciate it when you bait me,” Arthur snaps back, because, really, he was just leveling the playing field, or attempting to. It’s hard to work with someone who likes to cause dissent, who observes it like anyone else would a tennis match.

“ _I_ bait _you_?” Eames asks. He laughs, and it’s short and angry and Arthur starts to frown. “Let me say this again— _you pushed me up against a wall_ , Arthur, and told me to do something other than stare at you. If that wasn’t a call out I don’t know what is.”

And, okay, yes, maybe Arthur dislikes Eames because he’s an agent of his own brand of organized chaos, but it felt _good_ to back Eames up in a corner and press himself against him, to breathe in his scent and feel the heat of his skin and see his pupils dilate at Arthur’s proximity. So when Eames stalks forwards and pushes Arthur back against the counter top, he goes.

He lets his hips smack into the surface and then Eames is pressing him further, body against his, close and warm and strong, and he looks furious as he leans in and kisses Arthur.

After that, it’s rough. Arthur drags his nails up Eames’ back as he tries to get rid of that stupid fucking shirt—an old band shirt, not fit for an academic setting at all—and then it’s skin burning through the layer of his own t-shirt, and his eyes are rolling back when Eames pulls his collar aside to scrape teeth over his neck, none too gently, Arthur’s hips stuttering forwards, toward pressure and familiarity, and Eames’ hands are under his waistband now.

They’re in the bedroom and Arthur doesn’t know how that happened. Only he can feel bruises forming on his shoulder blades and he suspects they spent the trip slamming each other up against various surfaces to kiss—all teeth clacking and tongues pressing rather than sliding—sharp nails and strong grips and anger fueling whatever this will become.

He’s on his back on the bed, Eames’ hand on his cock, and he arches up into the contact with a gasp when a thumb sweeps over the head and his grip tightens. “Is this what you wanted?” Eames snaps, and he’s still annoyed, how is he still annoyed when he’s _clearly_ going to get off—Arthur is annoyed now that Eames is annoyed, and he shoves him away.

“No,” he says, and he rolls over so that he’s straddling Eames’ thighs, hands pressing his shoulders down into the bed, and Eames’ is looking up at him with surprised eyes as Arthur presses down. “What I want, Eames, is for you to put your imagination to use and make me forget anything and everything but for this.” His hips roll down and Eames’ eyelids flutter; he swallows and Arthur leans down to press his lips against his jaw, light and teasing, his next words merely a breath. “What I want is for you to fuck me until I can feel you in my bones.”

And then he’s gasping—moaning—” _Eames_ , Jesus _Christ_ , go easier on the teeth—oh, _oh_ , okay, _yes_.” And Arthur lets Eames touch him, lets Eames blow him, lets Eames open him up with fingers and then lets Eames in, all the way in, until he’s pressed over him and Arthur’s ankles are crossed behind him, his head thrown back, fingernails digging into Eames’ forearms as he breathes heavily through his nose. And Eames moves, fucks him and groans and adjusts his grip and they’re pressing against each other, hard and fast and easy, competing and sharing.

Eames won’t look at him for most of it and then—then he meets Arthur’s eyes—and when he does, Arthur feels his toes curl, and his own eyes widen because he’s coming and all it took was eye contact, _how_ did it just take eye contact—only Eames is shuddering against him and his hips snap out of rhythm and he presses his lips against Arthur’s skin and breathes, “ _Arthur,_ ” against him, too, and so he doesn’t feel so badly about it.

They clean up slowly, touches trading words they have lost in the wake of expended energy. Arthur closes his eyes and stretches out across the sheets, happy in that exhausted way one is after sex, and he can feel Eames sit down on the other side of the bed. He moves over, kicks the comforter down, and yawns, leaves the choice up to him.

And when he wakes up in the morning and Eames is gone, he doesn’t really acknowledge it beyond staring at the bruises on his body and moving slightly more gingerly as he makes his way to Starbucks for that mocha, satisfied in a way he doesn’t quite remember being before. His run can wait for today.

  
_-forwards-_   


“Come on, you’ve got to admit it’s a brilliant idea,” Eames says, grinning as he claps Miller on the shoulder and slides into the seat behind him. Arthur feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up in response. Living on the wild side of things for the past few years has his reflexes finely tuned to recognize danger, after all.

“There are cameras on the MUNI system,” he says into the folds of his scarf, pointedly looking out the window at the black walls of the tunnel passing by, disinterested as any proper business man would be.

“Well then it was a terrible idea to meet on a train,” Eames agrees. “Arthur, I can’t believe you let me plan this. Darling, I thought we’d reached an accord—you stop me from doing idiotic things and I go on looking beautiful for you.”

Miller purses his lips and turns his face away, but the man sitting across from Arthur grins at him. “Your boyfriend?”

“Ex,” Arthur says, because he can, and because he can hear Eames scoff under his breath behind him. He feels his eyebrow twitch in annoyance and the man laughs and turns away.

They’re quiet for the rest of the train ride, getting off down at Ocean Beach. Miller suggested the beach and Arthur agreed because, really, the waves will cover any incriminating plans and wash away their footprints after. He won’t admit it’s also because he’s secretly happy to be back on the West Coast—he’s a Washington boy, after all, but San Francisco is still better than any other options. Somehow, he suspects Eames knows this.

Miller is one of Mal’s old friends, one who followed Dom into illegal work after the crackdown on the dreamshare technology that destroyed their field of research. It had all gone underground, and Arthur had followed it—had followed the Cobbs and all of his colleagues. Eames had been outside the academic circle, more government-loaned research gerbil until he escaped his cage. He’s been running in circles ever since and dragging everyone who works with him right alongside.

Arthur hates circles sometimes. Give him a triangle any day.

So he claims.

The planning stage for this job is simple, quick, and Arthur listens as Miller slowly gets over his annoyance at Eames’ unprofessional nature and falls for the man’s admittedly brilliant mind. _If only,_ Arthur thinks sometimes, before Eames smirks at him and pointedly rests a hand on his thigh, predatory and too convinced of his own success—or maybe _because_ rather than _if only._

At any rate, Miller leaves them alone soon enough to start planning the maze. He’s acting architect while Eames takes extractor. Arthur is delegated to research, as he always is, because Arthur is thorough and less lazy than some people he could name. Miller might be slightly unnerved by whatever is tangible between them, though, and perhaps this has quickened his exit.

They end up walking around together, despite Arthur’s efforts to break away from Eames, and then they’re standing in line at a Jamba Juice arguing the benefits of one flavor over another. The girl behind the counter can barely contain her laughter and Arthur wishes she would disappear. Eames winks at her.

The day after, Arthur finds a note on hotel paper taped to the inside of the PASIV device.

  


He tries not to smile. He might fail, just a little.

  
_-forwards-_   


When Marsden hires Eames despite Arthur’s protests, Arthur backs out of the job. It’s not the first time he’s ever done so, but it is the first time he’s done so without giving any logical reason.

He’s hunted down for that, but he sees it as the better option.

  
_-backwards-_   


“Eames,” Arthur says, and he’s barely even touching him, lips _just_ pressed against Eames’ neck. He can taste sweat, can feel Eames trembling against him. His hands tighten involuntarily as Eames looks away in response. “ _Eames_ ,” he says again, softer, even as his hips cant upwards with more force. “Fucking _look_ at me.”

It’s all heat and muscle and harsh breathing, should be the same as every other time, only Arthur has realized things now that he has been denying for five years, and Eames still seems to be in the dark. They see each other every so often—more often now than they used to. There are plans and coincidental meetings and each of them looking for the other even when they aren’t doing it consciously.

And there’s this, both of them pressed together, shaking, moaning, skin slick and slippery and burning, one of them sliding into the other as both of them fall apart and back together, again and again and again. Gravity, Arthur is beginning to think, and he knows things now that should scare him but he has long since given up on pointless fear. After today, perhaps he has given up on fear itself.

They have managed the impossible, after all, and he is free of his obligations to Dom and they have made bank and both of them have come out of the inception job alive and cognizant. Celebrations are in order, but first there is this, reconnecting and re-finding each other. Maybe this is a celebration.

Arthur has Eames on his lap, has his head pressed against Eames’ shoulder, and his fingers hold Eames against him as his heart hammers away because he is making decisions right now that are not decisions at all, really. Eames is silent, but his toes are curling and his breath is hitching. These are familiar reactions, in their way.

Arthur says, “ _Eames_ ,” one more time and finally their eyes meet and Eames falls over the edge, spiraling down, up, outwards, gasping Arthur’s name just twice before he bites his lips and rides it out. He makes no effort after that, no teasing, no playing, and Arthur kind of misses the talking but he has Eames in his arms and it’s been two months and so he arches up against him with an imaginary gun pressed against his temple and accidentally says it, decision made for him:

“Eames, Eames, _God_ , I think—I think I fucking— _Christ_ , I love you, Jesus _Christ_ , fuck, _fuck_.”

He falls backwards against the pillows, breathing harshly, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes because _he just told Eames he loves him_ and it wasn’t quite on purpose. While fucking. And Eames will think it meant nothing, will laugh, only Arthur is aware—all too aware—that it was one of the most honest things he’s ever said. He regrets it already, because that is one secret he never meant to share, especially accidentally.

It’s silent between them, still, neither of them moving until Eames makes a noise in his throat and lifts himself up, pushes off of the bed, away from Arthur, and disappears into the bathroom. The door closes behind him and Arthur swallows. Ten minutes pass before he can move.

“Eames,” he says, and he’s leaning against the bathroom door, forehead pressed against cold wood. “I think, uh, that we… need to talk.”

“Nothing to talk about,” Eames says, opening the door, and he’s grinning, but it’s not—Arthur can tell when he’s wearing a mask now, in dreams or out of them, and this has all gone terribly wrong.

“No, I mean it.”

“It’s okay, Arthur.”

“It’s—Eames, fucking _listen_ , you bastard,” Arthur says, because Eames is picking up his trousers and looking for his shoes. Hot anger burns through him, and maybe it’s rejection. Arthur does not take that well. He moves forward, purposeful, and when he touches Eames his wrist is gripped so tightly he knows it’s close to breaking. He draws in a breath through his teeth. “Eames.”

“Drop it.”

“No.” He is stubborn, and Eames should know this— _does_ know this. “Listen to me.”

Eames finally looks at him then, and his eyes are angry, and this is so the opposite of what Arthur was expecting that he can’t find the words again. When Eames leaves—lets go of his hand as if he’s afraid of leaving fingerprints, evidence—he moves with efficiency, without any teasing or reassurances, without anything at all, and Arthur stands in the middle of the room, naked, feeling as if things he doesn’t understand are crashing down around him.

  
_-forwards-_   


The Marsden thing is slightly more far-reaching than Arthur expected when he dropped everything and left Ecuador behind him. Really, he never intended to actually be found by the wrong people, let alone _cornered_. But when the bullet rips through his chest, burrows in under a rib and sits there, he starts to think maybe he should never have let Eames bait him into anything. Maybe he should have turned around, ignored him, and walked away.

Only, it all burns so _exquisitely_.

__

-backwards-

Dom delivers the next note, still encased in its packaging. Arthur doesn’t find it for weeks after it arrives, so intent is he on finding _Eames_ to yell at him for acting like a fucking third grader. He doesn’t have time to read, really, so it’s no surprise that it takes him so long to open the book. Mostly he opens it because he fantasizes about ripping out the pages and setting them on fire and taking pictures to send to Dom to send to Eames. He disregards the fact that Dom doesn’t know jack shit about Eames’ location right now either.

But there it is on the inside front cover, apologetic even in the slant of the words, and his vision blurs because he is _furious_ with this.

  


“Bullshit,” he says, out loud, to a book, because—because—because Eames is making an excuse and this game he’s playing—pulling Arthur in and then deciding to bail—is not fun at all.

Arthur wishes he could shoot him. Instead, he buys a plane ticket and shows up in London.

Eames’ flat is empty, but Arthur knows Eames will come back to it eventually. He doesn’t plan to wait around. Instead, he buys a notebook, and he pulls out his pens, and he sits on Eames’ bed and responds in kind because maybe acting like a third grader himself will make Eames see how _stupid_ this all is and how much it hurts.

Because it does hurt.

He leaves one of his ties on the duvet and tosses the notebook on the bed as well, pages open, bookmark in place just in case, to display his message.

  


And then he leaves, because _fuck_ this.

__

-forwards-

Arthur is bleeding out, of course he is, because he has been shot in the chest and it is Eames’ fault. Eames made him go and do something so stupid—something so simply human, so horribly cliché—that there was no other way for it to end.

He won’t go down without a fight. A part of him, a rather large part, wants to live simply to spite the world for attempting to bring this down upon him when it was not his fault. He has to get Eames back for this, after all, for the double burns of rejection and metal ricocheting off his bones like his words ricocheted off Eames.

Except then he’s not alone, slumped at the foot of a wall with a gun in his hand and four bullets left, facing off against five assholes intent on his death. No, he’s not alone because _of course_ Eames is there, forging an avenging angel so convincing Arthur almost thinks he can see the light around him, but that’s probably just the blood loss.

__

-subsequent-

“Don’t think I’m forgiving you this easily.”

“I wouldn’t dare, Arthur. Go back to sleep or this will sting a lot worse.”

“Hate you.”

“I’m sure. Now _hush_.”

  
_-subsequent-_   


When Arthur finally comes back around, when he can see past the haze of pain and strong medication, he finds Eames sitting across the room on the couch. He won’t look up, but he seems to know Arthur is awake anyway. “Feel like shit?” He sounds much too cheerful.

“Fuck you,” Arthur groans, rolling over slowly and feeling fire lance through his chest as he does so. “ _Christ_ , I forget that healing hurts almost worse than getting shot in the first place.” Eames laughs, under his breath, and Arthur finally focuses on the thing in his hands. His eyes widen. “Is that—?”

The little red notebook in Eames’ hands is familiar. He’d bought it in some convenient bookstore in London, moments before breaking into Eames’ flat there and leaving it as a reminder. The edges of the cover are creased and folded now, battered, and—he wonders, just for a wild moment, if Eames has been carrying it around with him all this while.

“Ah, yes, this.” Eames tosses the notebook onto the coffee table and crosses his ankles. “I suppose you’ll want to talk about this later, hmm? How’s dinner sound for the moment, though?”

They order room service and Arthur sits up in bed to eat. Eames has to help him, and _God_ but he hates that the man still smells so familiar, still feels so warm. It’s quiet, in the meantime, neither of them talking to fill the silence. Arthur is thankful. He has no idea where to start this conversation anyway, too bewildered by his current situation to be properly angry or defensive or offensive.

Maybe they don’t need to talk, he thinks, watching Eames dunk a tea bag into a cup of hot water.

Eames picks the little book up again, though, and settles himself on the edge of the coffee table, slightly closer to Arthur’s spot on the bed, and he looks down to play with the bookmark. “Was it easy to break into my apartment, then?”

“For me,” Arthur says, because he really has no fucking idea where this conversation will go or how he should feel about it. Perhaps he’s in shock. Or he just wishes he were because then he’d at least have an excuse. “How long has that been in your bag?”

“Since Ecuador,” Eames answers, meeting Arthur’s eyes.

Arthur blinks. Four months, then, which is far longer than he even thought to guess. “Why?” he asks, blurts, and he nearly regrets it but the thing is—the thing is, he really actually wants to know.

“Really, Arthur, leaving me a note wasn’t your smoothest move.”

“Eames. Why do you have it with you? Stop avoiding the question and just fucking answer it.”

Eames presses his lips together, shifts his jaw like he’s nervous or angry or—he bends down and tosses something at Arthur. It lands with a soft thwack of sound on the duvet next to him and he picks it up. Small, light—a book of poetry. Arthur wishes he had a gun because then he could at least shoot Eames without getting up.

“The page with the red tab at the bottom,” Eames says, getting up to gather their room service trays. “Just… read it.”

“I’m tired of your bullshit, Eames,” Arthur yells after him. He doesn’t want to read it. “This is ridiculous. Can’t you communicate like a proper person? Can’t you just—oh, I don’t know, _stop fucking avoiding this conversation_?”

“Read it.”

So he does. There’s really nothing else he can do.

On the page with the red tab, a verse is bracketed for him to read:

  


Arthur throws the book at the wall. Wishes he could throw it at Eames’ head instead. “ _This is still bullshit, Eames._ ”

“It’s true. I mean. I know it’s shitty, but…” Eames sighs as he walks back into the suite, taking his seat on the coffee table again and rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Arthur, about all of this. I never meant for you to—to—”

“Fall in love with you?” Arthur suggests sarcastically, acidic, bitter, because if this is the reason Eames doesn’t respond to him, if this is the reason he ran, then pulling his Glock out is becoming an even more attractive option. Never mind the first bullshit note, or the one Ariadne saw. He is through with this.

But Eames looks miserable, looks startled, and he shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah, that. I mean, I think I was starting to realize how you felt, but… I didn’t think you’d say it, and if you didn’t then I was just making shit up in my head and I could get away with, you know…”

“Being a coward?”

“Arthur...”

“Or an asshole? Someone who likes to drag other people around by the tie until the other person chokes and dies and you just continue hauling their body behind you while you go on your merry way? Because you’re all of the above right now.”

“You’re not dead,” Eames says; his voice is harsh.

“I nearly was,” Arthur shoots back. “Maybe you didn’t fire that bullet but you and I both know the reason I was even on their hitlist in the first place was because of Ecuador, and you know _Ecuador_ was because of… of the post-inception thing.”

“Oh, _fuck you_ , Arthur. Like it was so easy for you to come to grips with it either? I can’t imagine it was easy for you to admit that you actually felt something besides annoyance for me. Get off your high horse and put your judge’s gavel down, why don’t you, and then we’ll talk, hmm?” Eames is a storm of fury and unidentifiable emotion as he leaves the room, rippling with an unconfined energy that could very well be fear.

Arthur feels vaguely sorry when he hears the door slam, but vindication is still bittersweet.

  
_-forwards-_   


Dom won’t meet his eyes when Arthur shows up for Phillipa’s birthday party. Arthur can guess why. He wishes he hadn’t come.

“Just tell me, Dom,” he says, after cake and gifts and girly things he has not understood since his sister grew up, after the kids are put to bed and the party cleaned up and the wine brought out. “Just fucking... tell me.”

“It’s about—it’s only gossip, Arthur.”

“Eames?” Arthur asks, and he does not feel anything in his chest. He refuses to, because otherwise his heart would have burned its way out of him long before now.

“Kind of,” Dom says, frowning down at his glass. The look on his face reminds Arthur of the way he used to stare at his projection of Mal. “And Carmichael.”

It doesn’t hurt, really. He’s only vaguely surprised by it. “Well.” Arthur scratches at his wrist, deliberates for half a second before downing the remainder of his wine. Breathes. “Guess I probably shouldn’t sign on for any jobs with them. Do you think if I claimed I thought I was still dreaming that I could get away with murder?”

“Arthur.”

“It was only a joke, Dom. I’m fine.”

Arthur is considered a good liar, but this is not his best showing and they both know it. They pretend otherwise.

  
_-forwards-_   


“What job is Simmons running right now?” Arthur presses the barrel of his G-18 into the man’s temple, feels his shiver and gasp for air.

“I don’t know, man, I don’t fucking know. Not involved. That’s not my track to run, Jesus Christ.”

Arthur frowns, hits the man with the butt the gun instead and watches him crumple to the floor, unconscious. “Fuck,” he says, scrubbing the palm of his hand over his face. He can tell truth from lie, Arthur can, and unfortunately this is it. Two days of research and another dead end, the third in a chain.

So he bypasses anymore middlemen and calls Simmons.

The temptation to get his revenge over Arthur will act as the perfect stimulus.

  
_-subsequent-_   


“What the fuck were you thinking?” Eames shouts, disgruntled, bleeding, his knuckles bruised. Arthur cradles his right arm against his chest and draws in breath, panting even as he shoves Eames forward and steps around Simmons where he’s sprawled on the concrete floor. “You couldn’t just fucking leave it?”

“I have some questions for you and after you dropped off the fucking radar for two months after Paris, I had to take some drastic measures.”

“I was _working_ ,” Eames growls, punching the idiot who tries to move in toward Simmons and Arthur. “I don’t need you watching out for me.”

“I beg to differ,” he scoffs, training his Glock on Simmons. Right-handed though he is, he is perfectly competent with his left; the gun remains steady. “You,” he barks. “I suggest you call this job off and jump down the rabbit hole. If you draw my attention ever again, you’ll be a dead man shortly after.”

Simmons spits at him, blood tinging his saliva pink, and Arthur nudges Eames out ahead of him.

“I was nearly _done_ ,” Eames says when they’re finally clear, sitting on the tube and drawing stares.

Arthur should care about the cameras around them but he doesn’t, not really. Instead he’s focused on that piece of him that has been burning for months, for ages really. It’s bright, hot, alight with a fever he only ever feels around Eames. His pulse is still too loud in his ears and it’s not adrenaline from breaking an operation this time. He wants to lean into Eames and mouth an apology against his skin, wants to feel Eames’ tension melt away under the touch of his lips, wants things he knows he can’t have from Eames.

After everything he’s told himself over the past few years, the past few months especially, Arthur is not immune to emotions and he cannot shut them off even if he wished he could. Surprisingly, this does not bother him at this moment.

“I know,” he says, conciliatory. “I’m partially sorry.”

Eames snorts. “Partially. Whatever, Arthur.”

By the time they get to the next city, sans luggage and a proper plan, Arthur’s head is leaning back against the window and his arm is burning something fierce. Eames has tied his tie around his knuckles and stolen a hoodie from someone down the train to hide his face. They wind up in a hotel not far from the station, sharing for prosperity’s sake.

“Want to tell me what this is all about now?” Eames asks finally, leaning over the counter in the bathroom and checking his pupils. “You know I have a concussion?”

“Can you hold this so I can tie the splint?” Arthur says instead of answering. He’ll have to get his arm casted soon. Eames glares down at his skin even as he holds the ruler in place. “And you don’t want to hear it.”

“Fuck’s _sake_.”

“Sorry,” Arthur mutters, and he won’t meet Eames’ eyes. It’s now that he kind of regrets everything, both of them in pain and Eames angry with him and Arthur—Arthur has no idea what he’s doing when he’s spent so much time convincing himself to stop feeling. This is so very counterproductive and illogical.

Sometimes he makes mistakes, but this, despite everything, is not one.

“Simmons was going to have you killed,” he says finally. “I wasn’t going to stand back with that knowledge in mind and let it happen.”

“Why?”

“Why do you fucking think, Eames?” Arthur flushes, a little bitter, a little wounded. “I can’t just—I tried to turn it off, I did, but—”

“I meant, _why_ was Simmons going to have me killed?” Eames interrupts, but his voice is—different. Maybe gentler. Arthur doesn’t know what to think of it so he ignores the change.

“That job you worked with, uh, Emily crossed one of his people. Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t get involved with crime lords, Eames? Christ, you can be so careless sometimes. Research is your _friend_ when it comes to background checks on your team members.”

Eames is quiet for a moment as Arthur finally ties off the splint, grimacing as he turns to face himself in the mirror. A bruise darkens his cheekbone near his eye, swollen and bright. “You know about the job I worked with Carmichael?”

Sharp _jealousy-anger-sorrow_ lances through Arthur and is across his face before he can even think to hide it. The split-second it takes him to mask it is enough for Eames to spot it. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, Simmons is blacklisted in the dreamshare community as of three days ago.”

“Why did—if you _knew_ about Emily, why the fuck did you even bother with— _Arthur_ , you _fucking stupid fuckwit_.”

In the mirror, Arthur can see Eames lean his head forward, see his eyes close as he breathes in through his nose, forehead pressed to Arthur’s shoulder. He looks like his world is falling from underneath his feet, as if he’s falling into endless sky. Arthur swallows and reaches up, tentative, stupidly in love despite it all. He knows what zero-gravity feels like, and he touches his fingertips to Eames’ temple, as if he can ground him, can hold him down and wrap his limbs around him and melt them together. “I told you, I can’t turn it off, Eames, even when I want to, even when I _should_.” He closes his eyes. “You should ice your head. If you want to sleep I’ll wake you up every fifteen minutes for a while to make sure everything is okay.”

“Arthur...”

Arthur gets up, then, because he can’t sit through this, and walks to the doorway of the bathroom. He doesn’t look back when he pauses, says, “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.1”

Eames draws a breath behind him and Arthur cuts him off again. “I’m going to get ice.”

  
_-forwards-_   


“I’m sorry, you know.”

Arthur looks up from the pavement, blinking in the sunlight. There are blueprints tucked under his good arm with a few files, two pens in the free fingers of his right hand where the cast doesn’t restrain him. It’s the third day of a new job, one they’d both managed to find in Orleans even on such short notice. Their reputations have preceded them. “What?”

Eames meets his eyes for what feels like the first time in years and maybe Arthur’s stomach does tighten a little, even if he would protest that. They’ve been avoiding each other as often as they can since they realized they were both signed onto the same team. “I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to understand this.”

“I... Eames, this isn’t the time, really. We’re in the middle of a job,” Arthur says, because he’s afraid, just a little, of what Eames has finally understood.

“Give me the marker,” Eames says, and Arthur can only watch as he uncaps the pen with his teeth and leans over Arthur’s cast. He feels just a split second of nervousness—permanent marker on a cast he has instructions to leave on for another two weeks at least, a cast he can’t hide from his other team members—but then Eames’ head is bent over his arm and Arthur can smell his scent—sweat and aftershave and deodorant—and his eyes do _not_ flutter closed in response. Memory floods his mind and he wants to lean in and scrape his teeth over the skin in reach. He only just manages to control himself.

When Eames pulls back, there is something written on the other side of Arthur’s cast, in the area hardest for him to see. He scowls and refuses to look.

“There,” Eames says, and he hands the pen back, capped, straightening his back and nodding. He looks like someone going into war, decision made, and he walks away before Arthur can do more than open his mouth. He’s left watching, eyebrows drawn together, mouth set in confusion.

When he looks at his cast three minutes later, tucked behind the stacks of crap on his desk, he has to tilt his head nearly upside down to read it:

_are we living? or are we dying?_

Under that, in a different penmanship, it says this: _I have been dying; it is only now that I know this. I am ready to live. Just give me time to puzzle it out._

Arthur blinks, lowers his arm from the angle he’s lifted it to, and then he slowly opens his notebook and puts it out of his mind. He refuses to befuddle himself over it right now.

But later, when Arthur is driving back to his flat in the city, he wonders what it means, wonders if he can dare to feel anything about it yet or if he should wait, should let Eames show more of his hand before Arthur even glances at his cards. It’s a game, after all, of who goes all-in and who holds their bets close, a game of luck and chance and cheating cards. There are no rules, no other permanent players so far, no dealer, no set minimum bet. It makes Arthur nervous.

The round has only just begun.

  
_-forwards-_   


In Tokyo, when Arthur is flat on his back—winded, surprised, terrified, gleeful—Eames sits and laughs and laughs and laughs, and it’s the best sound Arthur has ever heard.

  
_-backwards-_   


“I’m in the city. Mind if I stop in?”

Arthur pauses in the doorway of his bathroom and meets his own eyes in the mirror. They’re dark and unreadable and he says, “Fine. Don’t get caught. This is my favorite apartment and I’ll kill you if it gets shot up because you failed to be subtle.”

“I like that apartment too, you know. I would never _endanger_ it.”

And Eames does like it, Arthur knows so, because he’d spent five minutes looking around it when he first visited, five minutes of ignoring Arthur’s all-too-willing body in favor of learning his flat. And then he’d turned and pinned Arthur against the wall in the hallway. Their hips had snapped together, hands grasping one another close, and Arthur’s head had thumped back against the wall as his eyes rolled back.

Sometimes Arthur misses that easiness, the fucking and the teasing and the filtered honesty. Compared to whatever the fuck they are now, it was so much lighter.

When Eames opens the door twenty minutes later, closes it softly behind him, Arthur spares him a brief glance from the kitchen and returns to chopping up peppers. He doesn’t trail Eames around the room with his eyes, doesn’t let himself be too aware, doesn’t think about the times Eames has been here in the past.

Especially that last time, when Eames had left for the Simmons job and Arthur had let him go, had laid there thinking that Eames would never quite understand where he was coming from. He’d let Eames fuck him and assured him that it meant nothing, that Arthur was going to get over everything and it would be a clean break and it was just sex for Eames anyway. Arthur had tried, but then he’d fallen apart in Eames’ arms, shuddering and pressing his face into the pillow and biting his lip to restrain words that had no place in a casual fuck. Which is what it was meant to be.

That had been two months after Arthur’d healed from the bullet through his chest, three months before Arthur’d finally tracked Simmons and his team down to pull Eames from the job with information he shouldn’t have had in the first place.

But here they are now, with Arthur making pasta and Eames closing the door behind him. Arthur doesn’t turn to look at him again.

Only, he thinks, maybe he should have, because there are arms around his waist and a forehead pressed to the back of his neck. He tenses, snaps his eyes closed. “What are you doing?” he says. His voice is flat, automatic, level.

“Can you just listen for a moment and not judge me?”

“Probably not.”

“Arthur.”

He swallows and turns the flame off, moves the pan to a different burner. “Get your hands off of me and we’ll see.”

Eames’ grip tightens and Arthur’s breath gusts out of him. “No, I don’t think I can say this to your face yet.”

“What?”

He wonders if Eames can feel his heartbeat picking up in his chest, if Eames knows that Arthur is thinking of being shot and equating it to this moment, the burn and shock of a bullet ripping through skin and muscle and bone so similar to the pain of anticipation, of fear, of the smallest dose of hope destroying him from the inside out. He wants to turn around and shoot Eames through the carotid artery just to end it. Blood on his hands, his clothes, his kitchen floor, but no longer would it be gushing out of any open wounds whenever Eames was around him.

“I’m sorry,” Eames says, and his breath is hot through the thin cotton of Arthur’s t-shirt.

Arthur shudders back against him, looks up to the ceiling and releases his breath in a shaky sigh. “For what?”

“For not knowing.”

“Stop being a dick and just fucking say it.”

“It’s not safe to love people, Arthur.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t tried to stop?”

“I don’t want you to stop.”

And then Arthur reaches out to steady himself because his world has just tilted on its side—he yelps and falls backwards. He’s supported himself on the hot stovetop and pain blisters in his mind as he yanks his hands away.

“What the _fuck_ , Eames?” He doesn’t mean to shout—it’s the surprise—but he’s stunned where he stands, torn between staring at Eames and staring at his hands and everything _burns_ , burns like it always does around Eames and around pain and soon they’ll be associated because just _fuck it all_.

“Turn on the sink, you prat!” Eames grabs his wrists and pulls him bodily forward, shoves them under the faucet and turns on the cold water, scowling. “Christ, you’re a bloody mess.”

“It’s your fault,” Arthur says, shaking his head as his brain slows. “Fuck, _ow_.”

Eames snorts and shakes his head. “Oi, I didn’t know you were going to grab that, did I?”

“You surprised me.”

They both stare at Arthur’s hands, neither willing to meet the other’s eyes, and then Eames sighs. “I’m sorry for surprising you. If it helps at all, I’ve been a little surprised myself lately. I hadn’t exactly realized—well.”

Arthur turns to face him, finally, and if his hands didn’t hurt, if he wasn’t so unsure, if things were different, he would reach out and press his fingertips to Eames’ collarbone, would step forward and close his eyes and let himself believe for just a moment that anything could come of this. “Eames. It’s a little late for this, don’t you think?” He’s glad the pain prevents him.

“Is it ever too late?” And Arthur can see Eames _means_ it, and it shakes him to his core because he’s accepted, by now, that he loves Eames in a way that can’t be cut out of him or unplugged, and he’s accepted that he is alone in this, will always be alone in this. It was a surety, a given, a tested law rather than a theory, proven and proven again.

Arthur thinks he might be dreaming.

He doesn’t roll his die to check.

  
_-subsequent-_   


It was stupid of him, sentimental and uncharacteristic and he can still never quite believe it, but Arthur has kept every note except the very first, written on that hotel room table where they’d shared dinner and let their knees press up against each other with a comfort that has long been absent. Eames finds them all, of course, because Eames is nosy, is hiding, is embarrassed, and so he’s noticing things.

Arthur closes his eyes when the book is pulled down, leaves the room, and when he looks back ten minutes later, sits down to turn on the TV like nothing has happened, Eames has the binder in his lap still, open to the last page.

“If I wrote you a new note, would you put it in here with these?”

“I’d burn it, obviously, along with that entire thing,” Arthur says, because his reputation has gone to shit.

“Like you burned your hands?”

“Like I’m going to burn _you_ if you don’t shut up about it.”

Except Arthur can’t watch the news then, because Eames has put the book on the coffee table and reached over to put his hand on Arthur’s thigh. “Arthur.” He stares at the screen still, blankly, listening to the white noise in his ears. “Arthur.”

When Eames kisses him, Arthur does not kiss back, does not move, because every one of his instincts screams at him to run, to protect himself, and he... is unwilling to do so. He _wants_ to stay right here, in this moment, with Eames’ tentative hands on him again, where there is apology in each touch, realization in every indrawn breath.

Eames pulls away, then, and Arthur follows because, really, fuck being careful. If he can have Eames, even like this, even awkward and sorry and confused, he will take it. Desperation does not look good on anyone but Arthur does not care.

Arthur cares about the way Eames pulls him into his lap, the way his body is strong and wide and firm, the way Eames holds him close and breathes him in. It’s slower than it could be, more thoughtful, more aware, and as Arthur draws in a breath through his nose, as he twists his tongue deeper into Eames’ mouth, as his hands curl into the fabric of Eames’ shirt, he _likes_ it.

And he _likes_ the way Eames lifts him off the couch, the way they fall onto the mattress together, the way they take care of their own clothes. He _likes_ their skin brushing, touching, slipping. He _likes_ the sounds he draws by dragging his nails down Eames’ back, the way his body responds when Eames presses his thumbs into Arthur’s hipbones, the things neither of them really hear or say.

And he _likes_ Eames, still, loves and fears and hates him a little. But when Eames is on his back and his knees are around Arthur’s hips, when his jaw is clenched and his hands scrabble for purchase against sweaty skin, when Arthur is pressed forward and close and when they are fully connected—intertwined, buried, accepting—what Arthur likes most is that Eames _wants_ Arthur here, like this, and that this time he’s aware of every single feeling behind it—and he’s not running.

  
_-forwards-_   


Eames still runs, sometimes, but mostly it’s because he likes to be chased.

  
_-backwards-_   


In Tokyo, five months after Paris, Arthur gets a new note for his album. He does not expect it, because Eames is supposed to be in Panama, but nobody else could have stuck it into his luggage while he was checking into his hotel.

He stands in the middle of his room, staring down at the folded paper, and he wonders what this one will say. It’s taped shut, creased down the middle, with a sloppy ‘E’ scrawled diagonally across it. Arthur frowns, pulls out his phone.

“How did you put this in my bag?”

“Hello, Arthur, how’s Tokyo? Isn’t it a little early to be calling considering the time in Panama?”

“Eames.”

“Hang on just a moment, will you?”

There’s a thump, someone talking in the doorway. Arthur shakes his head, sits on the edge of the bed and plays with the edge of the paper. When it cuts him, he cusses under his breath and sets it down beside him. “Is this thing even safe to open?”

“Yeah, yeah, no, hang on, don’t open it yet—and don’t open it because I asked you not to either, Jesus.”

“I’m not _that_ predictable.”

“You are, darling, you really are,” Eames says, and Arthur has kind of gotten used to that again, the endearments, as Eames let himself become more familiar, as he let barriers fall slowly, as he accepted that Arthur felt things he shouldn’t. “Oh, so you got your PASIV device updated when you were in the States, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, looking at the case. “The new upgrade that allows devices to plug into the same dream from afar?”

“That’s the one, yeah. Tested it yet?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Open that note now.”

And when Arthur breaks the seal, when he takes in the words, he lays back on the hotel bed and stares at the ceiling, says, “Eames,” quiet, questioning, and when Eames laughs through the phone, loud and honest and closer-further than he should be, Arthur can barely reach for the PASIV soon enough.

  


1\. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” — Pablo Neruda, sonnet xvii

-if you'd like, any feedback can go here or to [my journal](http://imprint-of-doe.livejournal.com/21139.html)-


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